


Investigation

by Falcolmreynolds



Series: Shadows over Sornieth [7]
Category: Flight Rising
Genre: Background - Freeform, Backstory, Gen, SOS2, Shadows over Sornieth, Shadows over Sornieth: Waking Dream, between the games
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-16
Updated: 2019-10-16
Packaged: 2020-12-17 10:57:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21053255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Falcolmreynolds/pseuds/Falcolmreynolds





	Investigation

“Oh, boy,” Bhyram said, flicking his ears again. “This, uh, it sure is warm here.”

“Warm and wet,” Ambrose affirmed. “A little bit more humid than I’d like, but that’s how it is sometimes.”

“I’m damp,” Bhyram said, pathetically.

“Grow up,” Ainissesthai muttered. “You were the one here in the first place.”

“Okay. What did you find?” Ambrose turned to face Bhyram. “Why did you call us here?”

“I was super having a great time elsewhere before you sent me that letter,” Ainissesthai grumbled. “What’s the big deal?”

“You needed to meet up with Ambrose anyway,” Bhyram said. “But, um, there  _ is _ a reason. This is the town where Ember was called before the caravan mission.”

“Right,” Ambrose said, nodding slowly. “And…?”

“And I was looking for their office, and found, uh, some interesting stuff.”

“Bhyram, I dearly, dearly hope this is worth it,” Ambrose said, and sighed. “You pulled me away from watching Nokk’s brother’s nest hatch. She’s unbelievably excited about it, and I offered to help with the hatchlings.  _ I’m going to miss them hatching…!” _

Bhyram winced as he walked, claws digging furrows in the soft earth. “I’m sorry, really, I am,” he said. “But, uh… You should take a look at this stuff. I can’t figure it out myself. It’s all encoded, and I can’t read it.”

“Very well.”

The tundra led the other two through the wet main streetway, to a wooden building. There were no lights inside or out; Bhyram pushed the door open (it was larger than he was, sized for a bigger breed of dragon) and stepped in.

“Ugh,” Ainissesthai muttered, and opened up the pouch on her side, releasing a cloud of white fireflies. They took to the air and began to glow, shedding a steady radiance over their surroundings.

“Thanks,” Bhyram said. He led the two back through the small office to a large desk, where he’d previously assembled an array of papers. He sneezed, turning his face away from the desk, then trotted over, poking one of the papers with a wing. “Everything was normal shipping manifests and stuff, except for this, which was stuffed in a fireplace. Some of the papers were burnt, but these ones weren’t.”

The papers were covered in a wide variety of scribblings and scrawlings, meaningless strings of letters and numbers that went on for far too long. There were even pages of symbols that didn’t match any alphabet any of them knew of.

“What…?” Ambrose said, picking up one of the papers and peering at it.

“I don’t know!” Bhyram shrugged helplessly. “I - I can’t make any sense of it. I was hoping you could. You’re, um, the smartest person I know, so…”

“That’s very kind of you, thank you,” Ambrose said, automatically. “Let’s see here…”

She spent several days sitting on the floor of the former trading caravan office, the papers arranged around her. Bhyram stayed out of her way, as did Ainissesthai.

“Why did you make  _ me _ come to this gross little town?” Ainissesthai asked, two days in. “What am I possibly of use for here.”

“I - I mean,” Bhyram said, shrinking a little bit, “we’re probably going to take this and go, uh, elsewhere with it -”

“Yeah, so why didn’t you wait ‘til then to bother me?”

“Because if we find something important, we’re going to call everyone else who helped us rescue Eshkave, and they’ll all come here -”

“Why now, though? Why?” Ainissesthai’s frills were fully extended, and she was crouched down, sitting on top of the desk.

“Because I wanted you nearby, because I trust you,” Bhyram snapped, finally. “Because I trust you even more than I trust myself to fight, okay? You’re really quick and strong and good at fighting and I feel safer when you’re around.”

“...well, now I feel like an asshole,” Ainissesthai muttered, after a moment. “I just wanted to stay in the Sea a little longer. Like, traveling or whatever.”

“Sure.” Bhyram sat down on the wooden floor, curling his tail around his paws. “Well, thank you for coming anyway. Even though you didn’t want to. I’m sorry I had to - had to cut your time short.”

“...I guess it’s fine. You said you wanted to call others here too?”

“Yeah.” Bhyram nodded. “Everyone else who went with you. Um, I don’t know if they’ll answer me -”

“Ambrose can write the letter. They’ll respond to her.” Ainissesthai flicked a wing idly. “They all love her and would jump off a cliff for her, I’d bet.”

“Oh, let’s not do that,” Bhyram said, alarmed.

“It’s a figure of speech, Bhy.”

“I know, it’s just… never mind.” He shuffled his wings. “Never mind. They - I hope we find something.”

Two more days, and they did. Ambrose rearranged the papers for the sixty-eighth time and finally presented them with a decoded message… and it wasn’t one they liked.

“This is really bad,” she said, calling them to the front of the store, where midmorning sunlight shone through one grimy window. “I managed to salvage a couple notes that are all referring to the same thing. It’s the attempt to take Eshkave - I found out why.”

“Yeah? And?” Ainissesthai tipped her head to the side. “Out with it.”

“Something about a ritual,” Ambrose said. “They wanted to move her to the shore of the Labyrinth, and do  _ something _ with her, which I strongly believe would have been ‘murder,’ and that would have… done something. I don’t know what. If they mentioned what the effect would have been, it wasn’t in any part of the notes that survived.”

“Well, shit,” Ainissesthai said. “I love rituals. And by that I mean I hate them.”

“That’s very bad,” Bhyram agreed, flicking his tail-tip. “Is there anything else?”

“Oh, yes. Of course there is. There’s another one planned.”

“Another ritual?”

Ambrose’s eyes - a soft, mellow brown, with that singular spike of red - were grave. “Yes.”

“Where?” Ainissesthai demanded.

“And when?” Bhyram added. “If - if it said that.”

“Somewhere off the coast of the Starfall Isles. As for when, I don’t know. One of the notes mentioned midwinter, but as, ah, as a time after which the ritual wouldn’t work. So, before then. I’m not sure.”

“Shit,” Ainissesthai said. “Well, we have plenty of time, at least.”

“If we want to push it. I would recommend we do not,” Ambrose said.

Bhyram frowned at the floorboards. “So we have to find our way over there.”

“Good news!” Ambrose said, holding up another piece of paper. “Apparently, whoever was giving information to the former caravan owner thought of that. There is, apparently, some kind of gateway between here and the Isles.”

“It’s a gods-damned portal, isn’t it,” Ainissesthai snarled.

“I’m afraid so.”

“I  _ hate _ those damn things!” The fae scrunched her neck up, coiling in distaste. “Ugh.”

“We just have to find it. I’m not sure what it’s called, but I know it’s nearby.”

“Cool, great. Screw me. This sucks.”

“Hey,” Bhyram said, softly. “It’ll be fine. Listen, we can call the others if we need to, and, uh, then we’ll be able to find it faster, and then start to get a handle on whatever’s going on.”

“Midwinter,” Ambrose said, thoughtfully. “In the Isles…”

The other two watched her, letting her think. She began to pace back and forth, powerful legs working, letting her think better. “The other time it was Eshkave, a fire sprite, being moved to the Labyrinth, for some type of ritual, very soon… do you think it was perhaps meant to be timed simultaneously with the festival?”

Bhyram and Ainissesthai exchanged a glance. “The festival?” Bhyram said. “The… Flameforger’s Festival?”

“Yes.” Lady Ambrose nodded. “Eshkave would be at the peak of her power then, and if her power were directed towards something in the Labyrinth, it would do a great deal of harm. Before midwinter is both Riot and Rockbreaker’s, but a servant of the Earthshaker could do a great deal of harm if directed towards destruction in the Isles. I would say that is likely what’s going on - which means we have more time if that’s the case - but, of course, this is all hypothetical, and we can’t be certain…”

“Just let her think,” Ainissesthai sighed, to no one, as Ambrose turned, knocking a book on types of wagon wheels off the desk with a swipe of her tail.

Abruptly she turned again. “We must find that portal and summon the others at once,” she said, head feathers going sleek and sharp. “Right now, we have a luxury that we seldom possess: time. I would not like to waste that by waiting around here when we could be uncovering more secrets. Besides, if the aurora is linked, perhaps the orders have changed; we need to investigate as much as we can, as quickly as possible.”

“You wanna write some letters?” Ainissesthai asked, sounding almost bored.

“I would, yes,” Ambrose replied. “Presently, I will. Bhyram, thank you for calling us. You may yet have saved some other unfortunate deity’s servant from a frightful fate at the hands of our adversaries; we will have to see.”

“Uh, you’re - wait, they’re - they’re welcome? Um, that doesn’t make sense…”

“Letters. Yes.” Ambrose turned and strode out the door, towards the nearest building that wasn’t abandoned and could possibly be used to contact the postal service.

“And there she goes,” Ainissesthai said, watching her disappear down the street. “Okay, bye.”

“Well, I guess we’re getting thrown back into it.” Bhyram shook his coat out again; a few damp strands were ejected and floated sadly to the floor. He peered at the papers, at the original writing and at Ambrose’s scribblings. Something about them felt almost familiar, but he didn’t like the idea, and backed away from them, scrubbing his itching snout with one paw. The air inside the office was stifling and stagnant; he followed Ambrose’s footsteps and stepped outside. Ainissesthai followed him, landing on the porch rail.

“Well, hey, we get to see all these weirdos again,” Ainissesthai said. “Bonus and yippee.”

“I never really met them,” Bhyram told her, with a somewhat uncomfortable shrug.

She stared down the road. “Guess now’s your chance, Bhy.”

“I guess so.” He looked after Ambrose, then the other way, towards the distant Living Sea and, beyond that, the hazy form of the hulking Behemoth. “I hope it goes okay. They didn’t seem to like me very much when we met last time...”

“Because you talked to them for a grand total of like two seconds. Calm down, you’ll be fine.” Ainssesthai rolled her eyes. “How can anyone not like you? You’re like a living pillow.”

“Th...thanks?”

“That is a compliment, yes.”

Bhyram looked to the Behemoth, then up to the sky. Over the Living Sea, a few seagulls sailed in lazy loops and figure-8 patterns.

They’d find the mystery portal, and then head to the Isles to stop… whatever it is was going to happen. Some kind of ritual.

He sneezed again, but it wasn’t just the air. He felt a tingle of discomfort in his chest; something told him they were messing with matters that were out of their scope. There were probably more qualified people whose job it was to deal with things like this. Surely they were going to handle this horrific venture. Surely.

If it was just them, then… whoof, he did not have high hopes for Sornieth proper.

Why was he thinking this was some kind of cross-Sornieth issue?  _ That’s a little overeager, _ he scolded himself.  _ What you’re doing is definitely not that important. _

“Cheer up,” Ainissesthai said, misinterpreting his silence. “Maybe that buff skydancer will be back.”

“I… suppose?” He glanced over, confused. “Why would that cheer…”

“He was flirting with you?”

“What? No! No, that can’t be right.”

Ainissesthai snorted. “Wow. Dumbass.”

“No, that doesn’t make sense - hey, don’t fly off! I want you to explain that…!”

He chased Ainissesthai down the street. The town wavered in the heat, rippling under the summer sun. Beyond the Sea, the hazes and mists of the warm tropical waters and the Barrier Reef shimmered, and beyond them, the faint, barely-visible rainbow sheen of the barrier occasionally gave off a subtle flash of color.

And beyond that, shifting and beautiful and deep, the ocean stretched, out of sight.


End file.
